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Ukrainian Artifacts

Ukrainian Artifacts

Collection of WW2 Ukrainian Artifacts. The UPA emerged in 1942 as one of several partisan armies in German-occupied Ukraine. At its peak, the faction claimed nearly a quarter of a million followers. Fiercely nationalist, the group’s raison d’être was to establish a free and independent Ukrainian homeland. While it directed much of its energy to combatting the Axis invaders, the UPA always kept its eye on what it considered the real enemy: the communists. And as the fortunes of war on the Eastern Front shifted in favour of the Soviets, the faction suspended hostilities against the Germans to fight off the resurgent Red Army. The movement also orchestrated a fearsome campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting western Ukraine’s Polish minority whom they considered also to be among their people’s historic enemies. After the war, the UPA would be the last European resistance group to lay down its weapons. In fact, it continued its struggle against the Soviets well into the 1950s. The Ukrainian insurrection would eventually claim more than 35,000 Soviet lives, making it twice as costly to the U.S.S.R. than the Afghanistan War.